Popular BitTorrent site Demonoid.com has been taken offline after legal threats to its webhost by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).
A message on the Demonoid front page reads: "The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for …

Previous post said, "When will they learn to use the tech, rather than fight it?"

When you come up with a way to quantify the monetary gain brought by a particular technology, such as P2P _AND_ that gain outweighs the gains by continuing the their present course. Both these items are necessary for any shift by the labels.

Come on, this isn't difficult. It's just business trying to maximize profits.

Previous post said...

"When you come up with a way to quantify the monetary gain brought by a particular technology, such as P2P _AND_ that gain outweighs the gains by continuing the their present course.

"

Not too far from truth, but not right either.

More accurately, it would be when you come up with a way that, based on the xxAA estimation of probability distribution, has a gain that outweighs the expected gain they have from pushing their current agenda.

This is quite different: they are NOT trying to save their current business, which is doomed. They are trying to create a new ecosystem where they get MUCH MORE by locking everyone in, renting you something that costs less for much more (video-on-demand compared to physical rental, which is probably 10 times cheaper in the long run for them and is charged 3 times as much).

If they see a good probability that they can extract 5 times as much money as they did up to now by screwing everyone, coming up with a way, with P2P, to make up with certainty with their current revenue is not enough at all.

And that's why they don't convert.

Because otherwise, since the blanket licence system has been shown many times to guarantee a better revenue stream than the music industry ever had before, they would jump on it. But they want even more.

(that, and the fact that making the pie bigger is not necessarily a good thing for the majors if they get a much smaller share of it)

They'll be back

Alright for Bryan Adams, but what about Celine Dion??

And anyway, if they want to stop piracy, they should probably go after those $4/disc stalls in certain shopping malls rather than online piracy. I know one stall, run by 3 people, who have 5 new Mercs between them! And it's not like a small shop, it's a prime, right-by-the-entrance 30m2 operation!

re: "When will they learn to use the tech, rather than fight it?"

They've tried that already. Just google up ziptorrent and Media Defender and you'll see what I'm talking about. The problem is, is that for every step they make P2P users counter it and keep going. MD's fake torrents yields IP block lists, traffic shaping yields encryption, now the hosts just need to move the servers to a Carribean hosting company like the gambling sites and that problem also goes away. Legal or not, people like the freedom and will continue to do what they've been doing.

Nice timing..

When it comes a couple days after this story:

Official: P2P music not harming Canada

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/05/birkbeck_canada_p2p_cd_sales/

Let the music industry keep on wiggling, with any luck it will kill itself and we can move forward without those dinosaurs clutching at their outdated views. Music certainly won't die it will just work around them :]

@ Anon

Also, I own stuff on LP / CD / DVD by 10 of the artists you mention, as well as a few by Triumph, Saga, April Wine. Mahogany Rush & Voivod etc., etc. I'm not a Canuck, either btw.

I've never used Demonoid to d/l any of the above, as I bought it all legally, several times in fact, if you include LP / CD / Remasters / Special Editions! Anybody want a triple gatefold 'All The World's A Stage'?

And...

Joydrop, Ginger, I Mother Earth, Edwin and still many more. I have a lot of Canadian artists in my collection (I'm from the US). Am I one of the few who doesn't pirate and actually pays for my music? I know the labels get most of that money, but most of the artists I like are not mainstream, and this is one of the few ways I can support them.

@JP

Re: Canadian Record Industry?

While the Rest Of Canada might put out a band every now and then that's able to score a hit, a substantial chunk of music bought in Quebec is home-grown. They might not be known in the English-speaking portions of North America, but they're still there.

That rumbling sound...

Canadian Music

I'd say Canada's current musical output is among the best, if not the best in the World (and I've never even been to Canada).

Alexisonfire, Arcade Fire, Bedouin Soundclash, Bell Orchestre, The Besnard Lakes, Broken Social Scene, Death From Above 1979, Feist, Final Fantasy, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Emily Haines, Holy Fuck, Metric, Most Serene Republic, The New Pornographers, Our Lady Peace, Stars, Tegan and Sara, Venetian Snares, Martha Wainwright.... These are just the ones I listen to. There are still plenty of others. Obviously, most of these have little, if anything to do with the CRIA, but the point is there is a lot of good music coming from Canada.

It's a bit stupid to judge the whole of the Canadian entertainment industry just on Bryan Adams, Shania Twain and Police Academy. It's like judging the whole of the British entertainment industry based on Chas and Dave, Cliff Richard and Little Britain.

Canada very Entertaining

"Canada must be the worst country in the world for entertainment."

Rubbish - for at least half the year we have great fun building our igloos and for the rest of the time we get a great deal of entertainment looking at what our neighbour to the south is doing...at least until it starts to affect us!

Culture of Piracy?

the "Canadian" Recording Industry Association

...is Canadian in name only: It's basically another front for the RIAA.

From Wikipedia:

"The Canadian Recording Industry Association is a non-profit trade organization that was founded in 1964 to represent the interests of American companies that create, manufacture and market sound recordings in Canada"

What's their problem?

We've got a media levy. What are they doing shutting down torrents? They should go share out the levies and leave us all alone. They'd like to charge us money every time we whistle a happy tune if they happen to own the copyright on it. Scrooges.

Not A problem

I never touch the commercial stuff anymore, and haven't done for several years. I download legally available (creative commons) music from hundreds of unique bands and performers around the world. This is from both live gigs and studio recordings. OK there's some crap but there's also material that totally blows the RIAA stuff away.

Don't forget Nickelback

Not that I like 'em much, but they're pretty big. I'd prefer to listen to Blue Rodeo or Great Big Sea if I want to listen to Canadian music.

And it IS "eh?". It's a shortened form of "hey?" and it's pronounced the same, minus the H

I just love that I have to pay 21 cents extra for every blank CD I buy to burn some vacation photos on because I COULD also be burning music on it, and therefore I have to pay the CRIA tax. It's actually cheaper to buy DVD-R's here than CD-Rs because there's no tax on DVDs (yet). On the other hand, the CRIA wants the levy removed, because then they can start suing people for recording music like their big brother the RIAA.

New Zeland?

Nightmare

More indignation

Apparently since so many of you don't listen to any commercial music and make donations to artists in recognition (yeah and I give shelter to the homeless, too) then why should this bother you? The trouble is all you folks have been too used to getting your entertainment fix for free which is really the true price you want everyone to compete with. Your arguments are absolutely disingenuous and often blatantly dishonest, if people can get away with paying fuck all, they will. The customer doesn't set the price, never has and never will. The price is set at whatever the companies think they can get away with. Your energies would be much better spent in less selfish pursuits, the profiteering in essentials like food, clothing and shelter is a true obscenity of the age.